Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Join me this fall for a redux of my popular hybrid memoir class with Blue Stoop, expanded and refreshed! We’ll meet via Zoom on Monday nights from late September through late November, and scholarships available to folks in the greater Philly area. Hit up bluestoop.org/classes for more! 022
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 29/07/2026New substack about this stack: americanorphan.substack.com/p/what-im-ya... 021
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 02/07/2026In print in the July/August issue of @newrepublic.com, and now online: my review of Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s brilliant book Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young newrepublic.com/article/2117... 011
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 26/06/2026I gotta hand it to the AI grifters, I loled at this one 210
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 08/05/2026Not only did my cousin Lucas help me get a galley of my book to Sarah Jessica Parker, he followed up with her like a year and a half later on a random post about a book she liked to confirm that she got it. King! 170
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 04/05/2026All I ever want is to make Penny Loafer wear bows. She does not approve. 020
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 08/02/2026Maybe what we need is to bring back the Teen People Book Club? 000
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 21/01/2026My book THE SUN WON’T OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD turns ONE today!! Maybe you want to grab a copy? bookshop.org/p/books/the-... 4184
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 14/01/2026Philly folks! Join me on February 4th (my half-birthday!) for a talk about my book at the Pen & Pencil! We will highlight some of the Philly connections in the book and talk about recent developments in foster care and family policing. Free and open to all; RSVP: www.penandpencil.org/content.aspx... 030
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/01/2026(It’s much stupider now) (also pic of my mom and our dog Lucky Doodles) 010
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/12/2025FYI Penny Loafer recommends my book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD. She rests easy with what she learned from it. 021
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 15/12/2025I feel that the people need a picture of Penny Loafer in her little booties 826630
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 24/11/2025!!!! So gratified to have this story enjoy a wide reach, especially since foster care is a really under-covered topic. Read it here: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led... 180
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 11/11/2025Convincing you to read THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD by *also* sharing the first two paragraphs. Because I'm a giver. Share yours! 050
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 04/11/2025Penny Loafer loves voting for PA Supreme Court judicial retention and for Philly DA Larry Krasner! 070
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 22/09/2025Philly folks! Join me and Jiordan Castle for a convo about my book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW this Thursday at the Penn Bookstore! 011
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/09/2025I may never recover from the fact that Rider Strong AKA Shawn Hunter has READ MY BOOK and TALKED ABOUT IT and SAID MY NAME on this Boy Meets World podcast 😭😭😭 271
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 04/08/2025It’s my 36th birthday—and my first as a published author! So yes, I am using this as yet another opportunity to say BUY MY BOOK and TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT plz! bookshop.org/p/books/the-... 1190
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 18/07/2025These mourning dove babies were as shocked to see me as I was to see them 030
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 24/06/2025The Cherokee purple I have been EAGERLY tending got a sunburn today 😓 000
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 11/04/2025Fucking outrageous way to communicate with constituents. I have to watch a video of this fool kissing Trump’s ass?! 250
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/04/2025This morning I got a Google alert that my book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW was featured on a 7-min podcast episode, with a review. I listened to it and realized it was produced by AI, which I guess means they either fed the book or reviews of it through an LLM. These are the AI avatars: 430
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 25/03/2025Folks heading to #AWP2025 this week! I’m moderating a nonfiction panel about blending personal narrative with research and reporting, and our lineup is truly stellar: @lillydancyger.bsky.social, @sashabonet.bsky.social, @melissafebos.bsky.social, and Heather Radke! Come through on Saturday. 0192
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 07/03/2025I’ll be signing copies of my book at the newly opened Barnes & Noble in Bryn Mawr tomorrow (3/8) from 12 to 3 PM! Come through! 021
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/02/2025I may not live in Missouri, but I am the author of a book on the history of child welfare and family separation, so I wrote to the House committee on children and families urging them to reject the bill. Here’s what I said if it’s useful, and their emails: 100
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/02/2025Perhaps you need two cats. I highly recommend two cats. 2110
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 28/01/2025Wish I were one of my cats and had a walnut brain and didn’t need to think about the chaos agents running our country 380
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 27/01/2025I wrote about sharing my book's pub week with the dawn of Trump 2.0: americanorphan.substack.com/p/the-united... 174
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 24/01/2025Thank you! My first book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD came out this Tuesday (!) #FridayReads www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/krist... 000
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 20/01/2025The Gore Vidal quote comes from his essay “State of the Union: 2004,” where he looks back on a 1972 address he gave after the official SOTU, in the context of the second GWB admin. Here’s part that’s too prescient today 100
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 20/01/2025My first book, THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW, comes out tomorrow (apt title, eh?). Here are the epigraphs. www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/krist... 2132
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 20/01/2025Last up: I read Roxanna Asgarian’s WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY in the middle of my research and drafting of THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW. It is perhaps the most important book written on foster care in the past decade and I’m hugely humbled that she blurbed my book. (20/20) 130
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/01/2025Gabrielle Glaser’s AMERICAN BABY was one of the first books I read when I was working on my proposal and I used it as a comp. I’m so honored that she blurbed THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW! (19/20) 120
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 18/01/2025Though Kathryn Joyce focuses on international adoption here, THE CHILD CATCHERS was a useful (and infuriating!) text for establishing the evangelical zeal for adoption (and foster care) (18/20) 111
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 17/01/2025One of the first books I read before I started work on my proposal, and the book that introduced me to RISE magazine, which highlights the voices of system-impacted parents (17/20) 121
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 17/01/2025I’m hugely indebted to the work of Dorothy Roberts in these two books, twenty years apart, that articulate why “family policing” is an accurate descriptor for our country’s child welfare system, and why it should be abolished (16/20) 121
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 16/01/2025We love David Lynch so much in our household that we have named two cats after Twin Peaks characters (see Janey-E and Dougie Jones below). So sad he’s gone. 120
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 16/01/2025THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW drops in ****5 days****! You can still preorder it and get 20% off directly through Bold Type/Public Affairs with code SUN20: bit.ly/49w5kn8 033
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 15/01/2025THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW is in many ways a history of American attitudes toward poverty, and Katz was a crucial source for me. (I’ll forever be kicking myself that I didn’t know of Katz when I was a Penn student and missed taking a course with him.) (15/20) 121
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 15/01/2025One week out to book publication 😵💫🫠🤩! Today’s research title is Catherine E. Rymph’s excellent history of American foster care, which as a bonus features truly creepy photos from foster care advertisements (14/20) 101
Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 13/01/2025I write less about adoption in THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW than you might think, but Ellen Herman’s KINSHIP BY DESIGN—as well as her Adoption History Project at U of Oregon—were great resources (12/20) 140